Usergroups.
 

Are the usergroups coming back.. ?

What's the fascination with usergroups? Is it really necessary to have a forum within a forum? I'm not being negative, just curious.

We will not have usergroups for the time being; this site and forums are quite new, so we should not draw traffic from the regular forums. If you wanted to roleplay, you might do so in the OT forum, for example.

Korplem, Usergroups can be fun for people with similar tastes to get together to discuss their hobby. Most at the Dot were Roleplay groups which would have clogged up the large forums there, so placing them in a special section was a sensible and practical idea. We're still too small to have such a need, but down the track, anything is possible!!

I agree - let necessity be the mother of re-invention ;)

Roleplay can best be done in a seperate forumtopic imo. Still it doesn't have to be a usergroup. You can just add a memberlist in a thread and make some startposts. Still there will be need of a something called a forumtopicmoderator, cause this doesn't need to be done by our already fully booked mods and admins here.

I think as the site still has a limited membership and guest base viewing the current forums, and with the work still being done on both the publicity, news and feature sides of the site, usergroups would take up time and energy the staff don't have, as well as pull readers away from developing threads and adding info and comments to the current forums. A great deal of the data base will be the expert comments players make in the forums, and the discussions we have here. That will only happen over time and with all of us contributing to the current aspects of the site. Just my humble opinion anyway. ;)

Just to throw in my two cents:

I think the idea of user groups is not a good one in the long run. It changes the flavor of the forums by isolating certain tastes. To extend the metaphor - a Margarita can taste great, but lime juice, tequila, sweetener and water all seperate are not as nice.

While user groups are a way of controling traffic, that can be adressed by increasing the number of folders and subfolders - it has the same effect with out running the risk of excluding those that, maybe, should be included. I know that there are trouble makers out there in the world … and it would be nice to exclude them from disrupting things … but I don't believe that user groups are the way to go. This most likely is not the forum (pun intended) for the direction this post is going, but I believe a strictly enforced low tolerance for abuse in general will keep things mostly clean with segmenting and fragmenting the 'flavor'. The *only* exception I can see to this is set of folders only for the officers and patrolpersons of the forums.

There. I succumbed to my need to toss pennies away … and didn't even cross topic bane. (ohhhhh - there is a term I've not used in a **very** long time!!)

Hey, nice to see you here, Lintra. :)

Lintra!!! *Cm does a tackle hug* Nice to see you old friend.:D

Keeping up with the specific topic of roleplaying, maybe a roleplaying folder would be a nice idea. Not clogging up the OT for one thing, and always available for everybody to come and go.

Lintra, wonderful to see you old friend. Now if only Pinnen would drop by, we could CTB to our hearts content!! :biggrin:

I wholeheartedly agree to volunteer, join, and actively participate in the cocaine user group, the cold beer usergroup, the sex with Jaz user group, and any other similarly decadent user groups……but formally reserve the right to laydown my "too dam old for that shit" card if things get too hairy. So where do I sign up?

:biggrin: You already did - the Watch forums are our usergroup!
@Arma: if people started roleplaying topics, we would probably open a forum/sub-forum for them, no doubt about it. We had a roleplaying forum over at the Dot many years ago; it was well frequented for a while, but then interest ebbed, and it was deleted.

I vote against usergroups. Eventually, when the need comes, we may create public forum (probably including subforums) for that specific topic/area. Let's say there are people who want to discuss politics. It seems to be much better to have a public forum focused on that (as we currently have) than doing so in private forum accessible only to usergroup members.

At World of Gothic they have a subpart for RP, so it proves that it isn't nescessary to create a usergroup for it. Like my previous post here and like Arma also specified, a small part is all we need.

I think usergroups also can help the forum by potentially giving its members a stronger sense of belonging. If a member of RPGWatch is a member of a usergroup he may be inclined or have a stronger interest in visiting the site more frequently, and thereby might post in public forums more often. I'm just speaking from personal experience though. When I was a member of the usergroups back when we were all proud members of RPGDot, I found that I was frequently reading/checking the posts at the usergroup and often times figured… 'well, I'm at RPGDot so I might as well surf the Gothic public forums as well while I'm already here.' Yes, some people might just go to the forum to post exclusively in their usergroup, but I think most people will at least usually be distracted by the convenience of the public forums to such an extent that they'll also visit them [more frequently] as well.

I also think usergroups are a good idea because it hides specific interests or forums that aren't directly related to the main objective of RPGWatch, which (I think) is to provide a source or virtual home for RPG gamers to seek and share knowledge in a friendly and mature atmosphere. If I visited the main forum index and saw a lot of forums for things not directly related to any specific game, such as politics, sports, programming, hardware, etc, it'd dramatically alter the atmosphere here and needless to say that'd be misleading and it'd lose its personal connection with the viewers. The public forums adhere to a fairly strict topic; RPG gaming. Usergroups have the luxery of hiding those unfitting distractions (the topics that don't apply to the overwhelming majority) while at the very same time remaining loyal to the objective and caring enough for its members to allow places exclusively for those who share the same interests that are outside the majority.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts on the subject. I don't presume to represent the majority of community members. This is just what my perspective towards usergroups has evolved into over the many years whilst with you all at RPGDot.

Jaz I am dismayed that no one is interested in joining a sex with Jaz group. What did you do before /:) <----eyes Jaz suspiciously, yet oddly turned on :P

We're all scared of her hubbie!! :)

But he's harmless! Really. Despite his brown belt in Shotokan… :biggrin: